The 10 Most Promising Books of 2016: Today in Critical Linking

NOBODY CAN REALLY predict which books will come to dominate the cultural conversation—but has that ever stopped anyone from trying? We at WIRED have done a close reading of 2016’s line-up, picking the 10 titles we think will get the most people talking.

Golden Age comics were experimental and varied, as befits a nascent genre and medium, but they tended to share a few trademarks. Their heroes usually fought gangsters, crooked politicians and businessmen (especially in the New Deal late ‘30s), and Fifth Columnists, with only a few legit supervillains dotting the four color landscape. They skewed towards urban settings and noir tones, in keeping with their prose cousins in the pulp magazines and popular radio heroes like the Shadow.

Julian of Norwich wrote the first published book attributed to a woman in all of English literature. And although they had just two or three small windows letting a sliver of the outside world into their chambers, anchorites were influential. They could give counsel from the wisdom they accrued in their contemplative lives, and in this way, have an outsized impact on the places and communities they lived in.